Transport from Ozorkow, Ghetto, Poland to Lodz, Ghetto, Poland on 24/06/1942

The town of Ozorków (Brunnstadt), located about 28 kilometers northwest of Łódź, was occupied by the Wehrmacht on September 7, 1939, and incorporated into Landkreis Lentschütz (Lentschütz County). It had an estimated population of between 5,000 and 5,500 Jews, who accounted for approximately one third of the city’s population. At the onset of the occupation, many Jews were randomly murdered and the synagogue and a learning center were set ablaze. Jews on the streets were often chased, humiliated, and forced to perform hard labor— among other things, to bury the many bodies around the city. They were immediately required to wear the yellow star. The Germans ordered the erection of a Judenrat (Jewish council), which was established under the leadership of Shimon Barczinski. Jewish properties were confiscated and, by November 1940, half of the Jewish population had been squeezed into a ghetto, erected on specific streets. In the spring of 1941, several hundred young Jews (including, in particular, those aged between seventeen and twenty-one) were rounded up and sent to forced labor camps near Danzig (Gdańsk) and Poznań (Posen). The first deportation of Ozorków’s Jews is believed to have taken place in either March or April of 1942. Pinkas Hakehillot states: "In March or April 1942, apparently 300 or 500 Jews from Ozorków were deported under the pretext that they were not fit for work, or, it would appear, to prevent a typhus epidemic. It is possible that among them were children below the age of ten who had been taken from their parents." ...